The Dismantled Queen
by Stewbacca94
Summary: What horror awaits Ruby Rose, captain of the palace guards, as she rides out in search of her lost queen? Oneshot from a Reddit writing prompt.


In a time long since past, the kingdom of Mantle had fared well under the rule of Queen Weiss the Second, the fourteenth ruler of the Schnee dynasty. Her reign was started with full civil rights being granted to the Faunus within the kingdom, followed by an easing of the militarist lifestyle her cruel father had imposed throughout his tyrannical tenure. Additional successes came in the foundation of a trade agreement with Mistral, along with a non-aggression pact with Vale after her father led a fatal attack on that kingdom.

However, the serenity would not last. In the tenth year of her reign, the kingdom suffered a wave of attacks from an enormous herd of Apathy Grimm. Once the eastern borders were breached, Weiss bravely led her army from the front, leading her troops and Huntsmen alike into battle against the screaming morass of misery. Despite their best efforts, Weiss had no choice but to fall back from the brink, and duly evacuated the outskirts of the Kingdom to safety. The Mistralian troops that worked in the kingdom loaded as many survivors as they could into their ships and took flight, making it past the border before the Grimm's numbers were reinforced.

As Weiss paced nervously within her quarters at Frostfire Palace, desperately trying to think of a plan to defeat the Apathy, she had an idea. A dangerous, yet necessary idea. She would fight fire with fire.

Weiss possessed the same Semblance that all Schnees had; the ability to make constructs. These varied from simple glyphs that aided in propulsion and movement, to summoning constructs of the foes one had slain in earlier life. However, this latter part came with a risk; if a Schnee attempted to summon an especially powerful foe - such as a Huntsman or Elder Grimm - then there was a chance of the foe possessing the summoner.

Weiss knew that the population she led were radiating fear, and that it would only serve to fuel the Grimm's bloodlust and rapacious behaviour all the more. So she decided to summon the Apathy she killed herself in the first battle, in an effort to weaken the remaining Grimm by turning their catatonia scream against them.

Telling no-one of her plan, Weiss rested as much as she could before facing the shambling storm that even then cast a shadow over her capital city. With Myrtenaster, her ancestral Dust sword, clenched tightly in her left hand, Weiss began the process of summoning a mob of Apathy. It took an agonising ten seconds, during which time the Apathy leading the pack closed in on the vulnerable Queen of Mantle. And then, a cataclysm erupted within her mind.

 **She hadn't known that the Apathy were Elder Grimm _from the moment they spawned._**

* * *

Within a horrifying instant, the queen's body temperature plummeted into free-fall, and the one single ability of the Apathy lodged itself within her brain. Weiss's oceanic eyes were eclipsed by a black, oily residue that replaced her irises and whites, and the keenly intellectual, queenly mind was ravaged and twisted into that of a depraved beast. Opening her now blackened eyes, The Thing That Had Been Weiss opened her jaw too wide and yelled a single sound.

" _ **GRAAAAAAAAAAAGHH!**_ "

A thousand miniature fire glyphs emerged from beneath each of the Apathy and fired as the unnatural scream shredded their skulls into splinters. The Apathy were roasted alive to the last ... but the forest on the eastern periphery of the capital now stood ablaze, and the people began to wander what had happened. Crowding themselves around the gates, they cheered when they saw their Queen limping slightly from the edge of the woods. Their victory cries fell short, however, when her body seemed to crystallize all over into a statue of ice. She stood unmoving for ten long seconds, during which the crowds began to worry whether Weiss had survived her battle at all.

Suddenly, her black eyes swivelled to the main gate, and screamed again before vanishing.

" ** _YAAAAAAAAAAGHH!_** "

The entire front wall exploded into shards of ice and rubble, causing hundreds of Mantleans to die instantly. The rest fled as fast as they could, hurtling towards the palace that The Thing That Wasn't Weiss now decided to abandon.

Instead, the frozen monster regrew the destroyed forest, rendering it nigh impenetrable, and built a new castle within a clearing ten miles from the edge.

It was built entirely of ice.

* * *

Whitley Schnee, Lord of Atlas and Crown Prince of the realm, was in an unenviable situation that afternoon. His people were fleeing into the mines and caverns beneath the capital, trying their best to stay their fears in response to Weiss going mad. His general and treasurer demanded that he send the army to combat his own sister, while his chief diplomat and spymaster begged him to ask any kingdom for help. But Whitley knew that Mistral had done enough to help, and neither Vale nor Vacuo would be able to respond in time, let alone want to help his subjects escape the monstrosity he'd been cursed with.

A solution finally came from the steward and court magician, Grand Sorcerer James Ironwood. He had read of an ancient legend that anyone who bore "mirrored eyes" would be able to defeat any Grimm with a single look, and withstand the darkness better than anyone. The other advisors chided the mage; the rather poetic phrase "mirrored eyes" was mere poppycock to their mundane minds - surely _no-one_ had eyes that were mirrors.

But Whitley seized upon the metaphor's true meaning; he knew from his lessons that silver was a key ingredient in the construction of mirrors, and he knew of one warrior within the army that possessed those metallic eyes. With a cry, Whitley told his newly-acquired court of his realisation, and they promptly sent for the captain of the palace guards.

She was a young, but prodigious soldier by the name of Ruby Rose, and she was the latest in a long line of soldiers that had served Mantle since its founding. Ruby herself was renowned for her loyalty and benevolent disposition, and feared for her ability with her family's ancestral scythe, Crescent Rose. When she reported for duty and was informed of the mission, Ruby subdued her tears and agreed to bring peace to someone she'd considered a friend since her appointment two years before. With a heavy heart bound by her resolve of steel, Ruby retrieved her scythe, switched her ceremonial vestments for combat garb, and rode on Zwei, her loyal wolf, towards a wood that is now called the Bleeding Forest.

By nightfall, Ruby and Zwei were making slow going through the brambly, thick forest. By Ruby's estimation, they were merely a mile from the castle proper, but the trouble lay in the fact that the bramble blocked all comers from the blackened, twisted spires that the maddened Queen now called home. Suddenly, Ruby seized on an idea; she sent Zwei to the edge of the forest to wait for her, then concentrated on her Aura for ten long seconds. Operating on pure instinct, Ruby burst into a cloud of rose petals, having activated the Semblance granted by her own bloodline. After quickly escaping the brambles and murk, Ruby coalesced with Crescent Rose at the ready at the base of the castle.

Noticing a number of floating trees that circled the garish pustule of black ice, Ruby activated her Semblance once more and leapt quickly from tree to tree, moving onto the next one before the being controlling them detected her movement and took action, before finally landing in front of a nightmare that plagued her soul.

* * *

The Thing That Wasn't Weiss sat unblinking with her voided eyes on a crudely constructed throne of ice, with Myrtenaster encased within her left hand. Her once bright skin now looked pinched and sagged in a grotesque mockery of her beauty. Her hands were clammy, her limbs were thin and wrinkled, and her skin had turned a morbid blue with her body temperature dropping below that of permafrost. The sight seared fear and despair into Ruby's heart; not enough to render the huntress useless in a fight, but enough to stir the beast that inhabited her friend, which opened her jaw too wide.

" ** _YAAAAAAAAAAGHH!_** "

Ruby was brought to her knees by the horrendous, grating noise that sapped her strength. She vainly tried to activate her Semblance, but her Aura had been blunted by The Thing That Wasn't Weiss. She struggled to her feet as the banshee approached her with Myrtenaster in hand, ready to butcher the intruder. With a yell, Ruby lunged forward with her scythe.

Sword and scythe crashed against one another as the pair locked eyes. Ruby's fear was gone now, feeling only the cold deliberation that all soldiers mastered to fight Grimm with relative ease. Stepping back, Ruby suddenly activated her Semblance and spun The Thing That Wasn't Weiss into a tornado of rose petals, sending her flying in the air uncontrollably. Ruby leapt up, and pierced The Thing That Wasn't Weiss straight through the mid-section, pinning her target down to the floor of the ice fortress.

As Ruby ripped the scythe from her target's body, the unthinkable happened. The Thing That Wasn't Weiss shook uncontrollably, with her eyes rolling into the back of her head and her body rising magically upright. Several strands of ice emerged from the wound that tore across half her body and knitted the severed flesh together. Once fully restored, The Thing That Wasn't Weiss turned to Ruby and waved her sword in an arc around the knight.

Suddenly, all the ice around them began to melt and crumble as the temperature rose dramatically. Ruby used her Semblance to stay steady as the theater of battle collapsed around her. The Thing That Wasn't Weiss smiled horribly in the furnace of frost and fire, and had learned to not use the scream to take out her foe. Instead, she deliberately stalked Ruby around the falling ceiling as her Aura began to run low, before lunging haphazardly towards her back. Ruby turned just in time to see The Thing That Wasn't Weiss sliding on the ice towards her.

Over the next ten long seconds, Ruby's mind and vision went white. Two streams of pure white light erupted from Ruby's eyes and plunged into the twin cesspits of The Thing That Wasn't Weiss. She screamed in agony as the power of the Light God scoured the evil that lay within her body. Finally tearing the corrupted soul asunder, the mad queen was no more. As Zwei pounded in towards his master, the last thing Ruby did before exhaustion claimed her was to grab the sword that lay within the pile of blood and guts that used to be Queen Weiss the Second, of the Schnee dynasty.

* * *

When she awoke in the palace the next morning, Ruby discovered she was being watched by the Grand Sorcerer, who had healed her hypothermia as she slept. When asked if she remembered what had happened, Ruby collapsed into tears. She described the burning anguish and guilt she felt after having to kill someone she swore an oath to protect with her life. She recounted the grisly battle to Ironwood in perfect recall, begging that she be spared from the Regent's wrath for failing to save his sister. However, the Grand Sorcerer told her that the Regent knew what had to be done, and he held no enmity towards a soldier who ensured that Weiss was given the peace of death. Ruby nodded, and continued to rest before the funeral the next day.

* * *

The Kingdom of Mantle slowly regained its strength as the years wore on. After his coronation, King Whitley the First proved to be the greatest leader his kingdom had ever had, earning him the sobriquet of Whitley the Wise. But despite his sagely mind and benevolent nature, the young man constantly grieved for the sister he idolised and modeled his kingship on. His grief and persistent pain would've likely driven him to madness too, had it not been for Ruby Rose. She too grieved for the Mad Queen Weiss, and was forever scarred by the battle she had to fight to save her kingdom. Their grief bonded the royal and the soldier together, and this friendship ultimately blossomed into love. Ruby was a surprising choice as Queen Consort of Mantle, given the lack of noble birth in her bloodlines, but her kindness and charity won the hearts of all who beheld her. With Whitley and Ruby at the helm, Mantle prospered forever more, leaving the tragic tale of "The Dismantled Queen" behind in the dust as a folk tale.

* * *

 **A/N: Something I whipped up in two solid hours of non-stop typing. Hope you all like this one.**


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